The Politics Of Teacher Education Reform

Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association A competent, caring, and qualified teacher for every student in the United States! This audacious goal is taken right from the opening pages of the report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF)-What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future. The NCTAF findings are so powerful and unique that The Politics of Teacher Association (PTA) uses them as the basis for this 2000 Y=yearbook. Editors Gallagher and Bailey, along with leading educators, explore the controversies and ramifications of the Commission's major recommendations: Get serious about standards-for both students and teachers Reinvent teacher preparation and professional development Overhaul teacher recruitment and put qualified teachers in every classroom Encourage and reward teaching knowledge and skill Create schools that are organized for student and teacher success The contributors to this book speak to the underlying assumptions, research bases, and values found in the recommendations. Long-time and persistent issues about teaching, teacher education programs, and public policy making are examined under the new light of the latest research. Real-life successes of the recommendations in action are shown in two state-level stories and an urban school partnership. This PEA 2000 yearbook will prove a valuable resource for students, researchers, and all educators interested in teacher education reform in the 21st century.

Winner of the 2021 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education Winner of the 2020 Critics Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Council on Anthropology and Education Around the world, countries undertake teacher education reforms in response to international norms and assessments. Russia has been no exception. Elena Aydarova develops a unique theatrical framework to tell the story of a small group of reformers who enacted a major reform to modernize teacher education in Russia. Based on scripts circulated in global policy networks and ideologies of national development, this reform was implemented despite great opposition—but how? Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, Aydarova teases out the contradictions in this process. Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater reveals how the official story of improving education obscured dramatic and, ultimately, socially conservative changes in the purposes of schooling, the nature and perception of teachers' work, and the design of teacher education. Despite the official rhetoric, Aydarova argues, modernization reforms such as we see in the Russian context normalize social inequality and put educational systems at the service of global corporations. As similar dramas unfold around the world, this book considers how members of scholarly communities and the broader public can respond to reformers' stories of crises and urgent calls for reform on other national stages.

This text provides insights into teachers' continuing development and learning in contemporary western contexts. This volume is premised on the understanding that by learning more about the conditions under which teachers work and learn, it is possible to understand the learning opportunities teachers experience.

During the last 20 years, governments around the world have paid increasing attention to the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers. Teacher supply and teacher quality have become significant policy issues, taken up by policy-makers at the highest levels. This is because teachers are now seen by many governments as the ‘lynch-pin’ of educational, economic and social reform. This volume grew out of a recognition by the Editors of the growing significance of teacher education policy and a curiosity about international trends and differences. The book brings together nine papers from leading academics around the world: from the UK (England and Scotland), the USA, Australia, Singapore and Belgium, plus a joint paper comparing Namibia and the USA. Taken together, the papers reveal the complexities and contradictions of international trends. On the one hand, they demonstrate that there is indeed a common direction of travel along the lines encouraged by international bodies such as the OECD. At the same time however, the papers also reveal important differences among countries in terms of how they are addressing common aspirations as well as some apparent contradictions within the policies of individual nations. This book was based on the special issue of Teachers and Teaching.

Viv Ellis, Lauren Gatti and Warwick Mansell present a unique and international analysis of teacher education policy. Adopting a political economy perspective, this distinctive text provides a comparative analysis of three contrasting welfare state models – the US, England and Norway – following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Arguing that a new political economy of teacher education began to emerge in the decade following the GFC, the authors explore key concepts in education privatisation and examine the increasingly important role of shadow state enterprises in some jurisdictions. This topical text demonstrates the potential of a political economy approach when analysing education policies regarding pre-service teacher education and continuing professional development.

This edited collection brings together papers written by a number of experienced international academics who share a passion for promoting research-informed, high-quality pre-service and in-service teacher education that makes a positive difference to the lives of teachers and their students. Taken together, the contributions to this book represent a call to arms for all who lead education policy at local, regional, and national levels, teacher educators, and schools themselves, to engage in sustained and productive collaboration. Topics include: the centrality of empathy to the classroom, ‘practical theorising’ that is a central part of all good teachers’ armoury; the possibilities for collaborative professionalism which enables them to extend and enrich their thinking, commitment, and capacity for resilience; the pedagogical reasoning, habits of mind, critical reflection, knowledge, and skills that lead to the best classroom practices. Only when the voices of stakeholders at all these levels are brought together, heard, and enacted, are students in all schools in all contexts and in all jurisdictions likely to receive the quality of education to which all are entitled. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Teachers and Teaching.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Teacher Education and the Political is a striking book which addresses the nature and purpose of teacher education in a global context characterised by economic and political anxieties around declining productivity and social inclusion. These anxieties are manifested in recent policy developments such as the promotion of professional standards, the deregulation and marketisation of teacher education and the imposition of performance-related regimes that tie teachers’ pay to outcomes in high-stakes testing. The book assesses the implications of such policies for the work of teachers as well as for teacher educators and those undertaking initial teacher training. It is argued that these policy moves can be read as a depoliticising and de-intellectualising of teacher education. In this context, they illustrate how contemporary theory can provide a language for critiquing recent developments and imagining new trajectories for policy and practice in teacher education. Drawing on the work of theorists from Derrida and Mouffe to Agamben and Lacan, this book argues for the need to maintain a space for intellectual autonomy as a critical dimension of the ethico-political work of teachers. Together these ideas and analyses provide examples of the power of negative thinking, illustrating its capacity to unsettle comfortable truths and foreground the political nature of teacher education. Current teachers, teacher educators and school leaders will be particularly interested readers, alongside those concerned with policy in the wider educational landscape.